Is Steve Hilton a serious candidate? Here’s what his fellow Brits think 76%
By Garry South90%
8/1/2026, 4:00:00 AM
Topics: Politics
BS Summary: This article contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Appeal to Authority, and Anecdotal, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 47.9% saturation with 424 hits. Analysis detected 2,432 faulty-reasoning hits from 886 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 61.7% and a BS Rank of 76% (6,386 of 25,730 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 75.20% of the article peer group.
Here we are as Californians, facing a run-off election for governor that includes a Republican former Fox News host, endorsed by Donald Trump, whose only previous governmental experience was advising … the former prime minister of Great Britain?
Could you even make this up?
Yes, Steve Hilton, by dint of finishing second to Xavier Becerra in the June primary, will be on the November ballot.
One of these men will be the next governor of the nation’s largest state and will be charged with stewarding the fourth largest economy in the world.
No write-ins are allowed in the run-off election.
No one else is coming to save us.
You need only skim the facts about Hilton’s life to grasp how bizarre it is that this man could be a finalist in the race for governor of California.
Born in London, he moved to California in 2012.
As a Fox News personality, he endorsed Trump for president in 2016 — but couldn’t vote for him because he hadn’t yet become a U.S. citizen.
That didn’t happen until 2021, and he didn’t renounce his British citizenship until just last year.
And get this: The only previous office for which Hilton has run was … Congress?
The state Senate or Assembly?
Nope.
He ran for the British House of Commons in 2005, as a Conservative Party candidate.
He lost the election to another fellow Tory.
It keeps getting curiouser and curiouser.
Not only did he fail as a candidate in his only other run for public office, but as the chief political strategist for the Conservative Party, he was blamed by some for the Conservatives’ worst electoral defeat in 50 years, in which he demonized the opposition Labour Party — quite literally, putting out messaging that used demon eyes to characterize the Labourites.
After these, um, successes, he was chosen as director of strategy for Prime Minister David Cameron from 2010 to 2012.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was quoted as calling Hilton a “wacky thinker,” and he was actually satirized by the BBC as a manic, fast-talking public relations man on its comedy show, “The Thick of It.”
Having made such a good impression in his native land and solving all the problems there so thoroughly, he then decided for some reason to grace the state of California with his presence.
Any California voter considering marking their ballot for Hilton in November might take a gander at how some of his former colleagues in Britain reacted when hearing that he was running for governor for California.
The Guardian, a highly reputable British-based publication, ran a story about Hilton in May with the headline “’He’d be terrible!’
UK political veterans baffled by Steve Hilton’s run for California governor.”
Among other, how shall we say, unflattering things in that piece was this characterization by a former member who also served in Cameron’s government: “I think of him as idealogue rather than doer, gadfly not a serious politician.”
He added that he believed Hilton could only be elected “by freak accident.”
Attracted to some of Hilton’s ideas as articulated during the governor’s race, like his pledge to make California “Califordable”?
You might want to consider some of his proposals while working in U.K., which The Guardian put in the category of “zany ideas.”
One was to make the often fog-shrouded country sunnier by employing government-owned cloud busters.
Still think some of his ideas sound good?
Fine.
But could Hilton actually execute them?
Yet another member of the Cameron government, writing in 2016 in the Britain-based Telegraph on his time working with Hilton, said “I would ask: ‘So how does that work then?’
If I got an answer at all, it was along the lines of: It’ll be fine — just you see.’”
This co-worker called Hilton’s ideas “Steve’s dream factory.”
As a Democratic strategist, I have personally managed four campaigns for governor of California, including the successful races of Gray Davis in 1998 and 2002, and two for lieutenant governor.
As such, I have witnessed some pretty, shall we say, exotic candidates throw their name in the hat for governor of California.
Although I wasn’t formally involved in the 2003 recall of Davis, that effort drew beyond doubt the weirdest collection of governor wannabes in the history of the state, 135 in all, including an adult film star who promised to sleep with whoever would vote for her, a Sumo wrestler, porn publisher Larry Flynt, a dwarf, and a comedian whose slogan was “Insanity that makes sense.”
Oh, and a bodybuilder born in Austria who once made a bizarre movie in which he played a male scientist who became pregnant.
So, given this competition, Hilton certainly doesn’t win the award as the most eccentric candidate ever to run for governor of the biggest state.
Nevertheless, let’s get serious, folks.
This is not a serious man.
But, hey, if the good citizens of California really want to elect as governor someone from England, with a British accent, Prince Harry lives in Montecito.
And he actually comes from a family that knows how to reign.
Oh, but darn, no write-ins allowed in the run-off.
Sorry.
Garry South is a veteran Democratic strategist.
He has never run a campaign in Great Britain.
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